"Deutsches Theater" of Berlin to perform their production of Lessing’s Emilia Galotti, in Stratford

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Category: Arts & Entertainment

An International Symposium on Emilia Galotti, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The change of artistic directors at the Stratford Festival has brought with it some shifts in policy. Among them, the locked door of exclusively in-house production has now been opened up to let in international stagings. The first testimony to that commitment is the invitation to the famous Deutsches Theater of Berlin to perform their production of Lessing’s Emilia Galotti, directed by the renowned Michael Thalheimer. Six performances of Emilia Galotti will play at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre in early November of 2008.

To support the Stratford Festival’s new direction of internationalizing its programming, we will offer a one-day symposium for the Stratford audience and the public at large, to place the play within its historical context, clarify its themes, and explore the similarities and contrasts between present-day Canadian theatre and its innovative German counterpart.

The Production

The Deutsches Theater Berlin’s Emilia Galotti, first staged in 2001, is one of the most successful productions in recent German theatre; it has sold out over one hundred times at the Deutsches Theater and has been hailed by audiences throughout Germany and on its many tours abroad. Using stunning light and sound effects on a bare stage, director Michael Thalheimer transforms Lessing’s classic drama, written in 1772, into a timeless modern story about the failure of communication. Everything spoken in this production is ambiguous: pledges of love, vows of revenge and proclamations of faithfulness and virtue. Only the actions speak an unequivocal language-- the mute dialogue of hopeless fatality.

The play is very much a product of the German Enlightenment, a tragedy of social conflict in which the lustful prince Hettore Gonzaga and his unscrupulous chamberlain Marinelli plot to possess the pious and lovely bourgeois girl Emilia – kidnapping her on the very day of her wedding. Thalheimer’s production takes up the central themes of absolute power and ruthless sexual will, compressing five acts into 75 minutes. He makes us feel the velocity of Lessing’s overpowering machine of a play, hurtling its characters forward toward their fates.

Emilia Galotti Symposium
Sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute of the University of Toronto, in cooperation with the following academic units: Centre for Comparative Literature; University College Drama Program; Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama; Joint Initiative of German and European Studies; Department of German, Faculty of Arts & Science and the Goethe Institute, Toronto.

Location:
Munk Centre for International Studies
Vivian & David Campbell Conference Facility
University of Toronto
1 Devonshire Place

Time: November 2nd, 10 am to 6 pm
Format: Lectures, panel discussions, video presentations, interviews
Admission: free

Participants:
Dr. Joerg Bochow, Chief Dramatuge at the Staatstheater in Stuttgart, Germany
Prof. Antje Budde, UC Drama & Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Prof. Willi Goetschel, Department of German, University of Toronto
Prof. Gerd Hauck, Chair, Department of Drama & Speech Communication, University of Waterloo
Prof. Pia Kleber, Comparative Literature & UC Drama, Helen & Paul Phelan Chair in Drama, University of Toronto
Prof. John Noyes, Department of German, University of Toronto
Oliver Reeves, Artistic Director of the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, Germany
Ute Scharfenberg, Chef Dramaturge, Staatstheater, Magdeburg, Germany
Michael Thalheimer, Director of Emilia Galotti, Deutsches Theater, Berlin

Emilia Galotti Schedule

10:00am --10:15am Prof. Pia Kleber, Introduction

10:15am --11:00am Prof. Willi Goetschel: “Sovereignity and other States of
Exception”. Lessing’s political Drama.

11:00am --11:45am Dr. Joerg Bochow: “ Lessing’s thoughts on Theatre”.

11:45am --12:30pm Prof. Gerd Hauck: “Fat Maggots and Hunger Artists?”
Contemporary German and Canadian Theatre – A Comparison.

12:30pm --2:30pm Lunch Break

2:30pm --3:15pm Ute Scharfenberg: “Temptation is True Violence”.
Contemporary Discoveries in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The bourgeois tragedy revisited by Michael Thalheimer (2002).

3:15pm—4:00pm Oliver Reese: The Deutsches Theater, Berlin:
Cultural Diversity and National Heritage. Contemporary
Program Planning.

4:00 pm – 4:15 pm Coffee/Tea Break

4:15 pm – 5 pm Panel discussion chaired by Prof. Antje Budde:
Michael Thalheimer, Prof. John Noyes, Oliver Reese, Dr. Joerg
Bochow